When was the last time that you ate together with others? Maybe you had breakfast with your family or lunch with your friends. Such food sharing is often part of everyday routines; habitual practices that we rarely reflect on, except when they change. Perhaps an extended daily commute to work in a new job means that breakfast with the family gets replaced with a snack on the go, while the leisurely lunch dates with colleagues might get substituted with lunch ‘al-desko’ when work demands rise. Certainly, anecdotal evidence in the mass media of growing isolationism around eating is becoming increasingly bolstered by academic studies that show the dangers of eating alone (Dunbar, 2017). Research examining eating trends has found that the average American does not eat with others on a daily basis. Even more surprising is that one in every five meals is eaten in a car (NPD, 2014). This is concerning when considered alongside analyses that have found that children who do not regularly eat with their parents are significantly more likely to have behavioural issues at school and in later life, and are more likely to be overweight. Meanwhile, children who do eat with their family experience less trouble with drugs and alcohol, exhibit healthier eating patterns, show better academic performance and report being closer with their parents (CASA, 2012).

Food sharing is a foundational human practice at the very core of human civilisation, helping to secure sustenance, cement social relations and permit role specialisation within societal groups. While other species also share food, the patterning, persistence and complexity of food sharing within human groups means that we share food like no others. This has led to a suite of theories attempting to explain why people first began to share (Kaplan and Gurven, 2005). Some of these theories see sharing as a process of natural selection; an instrumental means to ensure reproductive fitness and ultimately the survival of individuals and kinship networks. This is exemplified by the toleration of begging and food theft within groups when food is abundant and the donation of food first to close relatives in times of scarcity.